


The Vengeance Paradox

by ishie



Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-25
Updated: 2012-09-25
Packaged: 2017-11-15 01:47:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/521832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishie/pseuds/ishie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things have to be carried out in complete secrecy, like buying things off the internet that come wrapped in brown paper and plotting the Greatest Revenge of All Time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set between seasons 2 and 3 and veers wildly AU before 3x01, mostly because it was written before season 3. It's like time travel!

[](http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v293/ishie/?action=view&current=covervegeanceb.jpg)Cover by the wonderful [](http://salixlikescake.livejournal.com/profile)**salixlikescake** (click for larger)

 

 

Penny's pretty okay with the guys knowing most of what goes on in her life. It's not like she's ever really bought into that whole be-mysterious thing, and with brains that big it's hard to get anything past them. Yeah, she could totally live with never getting lectured on the most cost-effective way to buy tampons again but for the most part it's kind of cool that they can always tell when she's had a bad day or whatever.

Never mind that most of the building knows when she's had a bad day - at least she knows she'll never have to worry about projecting all the way to the back row when she gets another community theater gig.

When she does manage to keep something to herself, it's a damn good feeling. For about twenty minutes, and then she wants to go tearing across the hall to tell everybody. Hello, she _is_ a Sagittarius.

So when she's getting ready for bed at night and catches a glimpse of the whiteboard propped on the back of her dresser, she has to jump under the covers immediately and pull the pillow over her head.

Some things have to be carried out in complete secrecy, like buying things off the internet that come wrapped in brown paper and plotting the Greatest Revenge of All Time.

She can practically taste the "bazinga!"

\---

It's been seven months and some odd days. She had a calendar at one point but she hasn't seen it in weeks. She does know that it's been six menu changes, three new servers, and twenty-four auditions since she had to pay Mrs Vartebedian's grandkids ten bucks to help her reel in her underwear, plus another ten to never speak of it again.

The creepy one still makes kissy faces at her in the lobby.

Sometimes she worries that she's not exactly roping with a regulation lariat. When Molly calls with an extra ticket to the No Doubt concert and Penny blows her off, she tells herself it's because she's wiped out from serving fried mac and cheese to busloads of tourists all day long. Because it's totally not that she's Googling places to buy dry ice and sheep's blood and just found a place in Reseda that carries both.

She also worries that Sheldon knows exactly what she's doing. Sometimes when they're sitting around his apartment - and he's always there when she is, even if the other guys come and go - she catches him looking at her with his science face on. The one that looks like he can see straight through whatever he's looking at all the way down to, like, the atoms and stuff. She acts just as sweet as sugar around him or she teases and pokes at his weird habits, all totally normal or as normal as it gets, and no one else seems to pick up on whatever it is he's seeing.

The first couple of times, she wipes a napkin across her mouth, sure that she's gotten something smeared there from dinner and he would bust out one of his hygiene and proper digestion lectures. He never does so she figures that's not it and goes back to slurping down her noodles like usual.

Just in case, she moves the whiteboard from the top of her dresser to the chair in the corner that always gets blocked from view by the bedroom door.

The longer it goes, though, the more determined she is that it happens at exactly the right time. When he's walking around all smug about meeting George Smoot, she tells herself that it would be cruel to pop his good mood and tables her plans.

When he actually gets an email from Gablehauser telling him that he's an invaluable member of the department after winning the research grant, she looks at her nightlight, Johnny Depp II, swimming around in his bowl and calls the place in Reseda to cancel her order. She also erases half of the scribbles on the board and pulls out the fat green marker to start all over.

Because, look, this revenge is going to be _awesome_ and she doesn't want to screw up that moment of triumph and gloating with feeling like a total bitch.

\---

Leonard calls her from the Anchorage airport, four weeks ahead of schedule. They stumble through incredibly awkward small talk for a while then sit in silence while she paints her toes and wonders when he'll get around to the point.

"Look, Sheldon doesn't want to tell anyone but we're not really coming home early because someone miscalculated our provisions," he says, and she paints a bubblegum pink streak straight up her big toe.

"Oh no, what happened? Did Howard harass the wrong lady scientist? Or polar bear?"

Leonard laughs his nervous little giggle, the one she's starting to translate as "I'm laughing because I think you think you're funny and I think you're hot." Right away, she feels bad for thinking it. Again. It's not really his fault that she changes her mind about how much she likes him every twenty minutes or so. Well, it's partially his fault when you get down to it but with him thousands of miles away, it's probably way more hers.

"No, nothing like that," Leonard explains. "He was actually really good these past few weeks! Hardly a dirty joke at all once he started practicing with the crossbow every morning."

She wants to say, "Yeah, whatever, tell me why you're coming home early," but he's talking again before she can.

He drops his voice to a whisper and says, "The Foundation pulled our funding. We haven't had a single data point to corroborate Sheldon's hypothesis and apparently they want to move the money to a project they think has more potential."

Oh, that's _bad_. She winces in sympathy. Leonard rattles on for a few more minutes then hangs up on her while yelling at Raj to go get Howard away from the ladies' room door.

Her nails are still all tacky and she needs to clean up her big toe. Instead she hobbles across the hallway with her laundry basket and puts Sheldon's superhero t-shirts back in his room.

At least now she can give back all of Renee's gold lamé halter tops. Not having to listen to her bitching about having nothing to wear to the clubs is almost as good a payoff.

\---

It's now been something like nine and a half months. If the stupid whiteboard were pregnant, she'd be hip-deep in diapers by now.

She has erased and started over so many times that she almost wants to give up. The only constants on the board are a doodle of a bra hanging from a telephone wire, and his mom's number in Texas. She hasn't had to use it once which is kind of disappointing because she liked it when Mary Cooper made Sheldon snap out of his sulk. She's always appreciated a good sulk-snapping.

Plus, for all her Jesus talk, the woman is kind of cool, much cooler than her own mom and dad. It's hard to imagine that she somehow produced a kid like Sheldon. Penny still suspects he was actually hatched from some pod or something, especially after getting to know Missy.

\---

Somebody gets sick or gets married or dies in the physics department at Caltech and Leonard has to start teaching a couple of classes to help cover. Or something. She was busy with Aragorn's stubble on _Lord of the Rings_ Marathon Night when he told them so it's no wonder she didn't really pay attention. Whatever it is, though, there's no question of Sheldon doing it, obviously.

One of the classes Leonard gets stuck with is Advanced Classical Quantum Leaps or whatever. It sends Sheldon into a minor meltdown because it's three hours long, one afternoon a week, and by the time Leonard would get home in rush hour traffic, it would be too late to drive back across town to the comic book store for New Comic Book Day. Somehow this translates to Penny telling her manager that she can't work on Wednesdays after three anymore. Instead, she works lunch, then races across town to pick up Sheldon and drive him to the store.

The payment? Awkward conversation with Stuart, who thankfully has acted like such an awesome guy about that whole making-out disaster and not like a total ogling creepazoid with bitterness issues. He's also pretty awesome about helping her get the other ogling creepazoids in the store to leave her alone while Sheldon zones out over reissues and gets into arguments about manga.

Stuart's new girlfriend Ella is really nice, too, but Penny doesn't get about half the jokes she tells. The half she does get are all because she's slowly adopted the geek squad as her own. It feels kind of weird the first time Ella calls and invites her over for a TiVo night of _How I Met Your Mother_ , _Ace of Cakes_ and that show about the geeks (and she totally loves Ella's friend Angie for explaining all the stuff that goes over her head in a way that doesn't make her feel stupid), but it's so much fun that it quickly becomes her regular Monday night thing.

She also gets free dinners and first rotation on Halo Nights. It might not _sound_ like such a great trade-off but it completely works for her.

\---

"Penny, why is there a whiteboard in your room?" Sheldon's voice sounds kind of high-pitched and strangled, like when Wolowitz tries to convince everyone that some hot chick superhero in spandex is a better fighter than some other hot chick superhero in spandex. Or like Leonard when he's trying to pretend he's not a total nerd.

She crushes the Penny Blossom she's working on as every muscle in her body freezes and her mind starts racing. She can't remember what's written on there. Obviously his mom's number, but what else? Which plan is she almost ready to give up this time? The sheep's blood thing was months ago, the t-shirts, too. There was the one about filling his office with balloons (the mylar kind that he says make his teeth itch), and then the one with Saran Wrapping pretty much everything in his bathroom and kitchen. Oh, and hiring a barbershop quartet to follow him around for three days whistling Motown. She got close on a couple of those but in the end discarded them for one reason or another.

The last one she remembers working on is... "Oh, _shit_."

Sheldon bursts out of her room, eyes wild and face twitching. He has the board in one hand and a bundle of markers in the other, waving both erratically around the room.

"My god, woman," he says, all breathless and bug-eyed. "You don't even have adequate ventilation in there! It's a wonder you haven't asphyxiated."

That explains the breathless thing, then. He drops the board and the markers on the couch and she's a little more shocked at that than she is that he's not saying anything about what's written there. He stalks back into her bedroom and she's so busy scrambling to wipe the board with her shirt that she doesn't even yell at him for wandering in there in the first place.

He comes back out right away and he's carrying the chair she's been using as an easel. It's empty of all her dirty clothes and she wonders if he dumped them on her bed with the same carelessness that he dumped the board; she also wonders why he didn't stop to fold them and put them in her hamper like he usually does. She's got her shirt up somewhere around her neck as she frantically wipes. She feels the cool air on her chest but doesn't really think about it until Sheldon gasps and pivots on one foot away from her, chair clutched to his chest like a battle shield.

Right. Now she remembers that she's not wearing a bra.

"Don't you have an eraser?" he says in that strangled voice again.

"Oh, I, uh," she says to the back of his neck, about as smooth as Raj at the start of ladies' night. "I lost it?"

He shakes his head at the wall and chides, "Penny, Penny, _Penny_."

And then he's gearing up for one of his lectures - this one sounds like "an organized home is an optimal living environment." She's heard it, oh, eighty kajillion times now but she will totally listen to it again if it means he's distracted from noticing the map she'd drawn on the board.

As he winds down to his thrilling conclusion ("After all, studies have shown that serotonin levels drop by as much as 75% when entering a messy living area!"), she gives the board a once-over and heaves a sigh of relief before pulling her shirt back down and telling him to stop being such an old lady. He darts a quick glance over his shoulder, carefully keeping his eyeline as high up as he can without looking at the ceiling. His cheeks are still pink and he clears his throat a couple of times before making an excuse to go back to his own apartment. Before he goes, though, he takes the whiteboard out of her hands and sets it up on the chair where he's put it by the window.

"The amount of light in this part of your apartment should contribute to a much more productive work area," he says.

She flops down onto the couch when he's gone, relieved that she seems to have gotten away free and clear and only a little bit embarrassed about accidentally flashing him.

But damn it, she really hopes she remembers all the steps in between the candygram and the tapioca deliveries.

\---

She doesn't.

Since Penny's not the kind of girl to beat herself up over forgetting the _best revenge ever_ \- well, not much anyway - she just jumps right in to planning another one. This time, though, she takes a picture of the board with her phone every night before bed, just in case she has to sacrifice it for the greater good again.

And she's big enough to admit that Sheldon was right - it's much better to work on her schemes in the living room by the windows. She hasn't had that horrible pounding headache in weeks, and is no longer as terrified that she's more than a little bit addicted to the smell of the markers.

She does, however, just about have a heart attack every time someone knocks on her door.

She spends three days coming up with a code that she can use to draw out her plans so she doesn't have to re-copy everything whenever one of the guys bursts in with whatever crisis du jour has their panties in a twist. Now, instead of anything incriminating, the board looks like it's a design for Penny Blossom necklaces. Sheldon gets all science facey when he asks about it and she tells him that thinking about expanding her product line is just a little something she's doing to get rid of her audition frustrations.

When he hands her a shrink-wrapped package one afternoon on the way to the comic book store, and she pulls out a copy of _The Actor's Survival Guide_ , she throws the car into park right there at the intersection and lunges over the gearshift to give him a big hug.

"I bought it online. It was very highly recommended," he says. Then, " _Pfft_. Your hair can't be in my mouth, Penny."

Then, "There, there."

\---

She wipes off the board and sticks it in the back of her closet, behind the stilettos she couldn't really afford but Angie talked her into buying and she still can't walk in them for more than the length of couch. The next time Sheldon comes over, he looks around the room and seems disappointed but she's pretty sure that's because the DVD he's trying to get back is lying loose on top of her stereo cabinet in a jumble of other discs and some dangly earrings.

Penny follows him back across the hallway, practically stepping on his heels the whole way. She hadn't even gotten to the end of the episode where Donna has the big creepy bug thing on her back -

("Because, ew, _creepy_. And there was totally something buzzing around the light in my kitchen that night and that's why I didn't finish, so suck it, Sheldon."

"I have no intention of sucking anything," he says primly, then ducks his head.

She has to beat back the urge to say something rude and completely insane that Howard would probably appreciate.)

\- and if he's taking possession back, he's damn well going to let her watch with him.

When Leonard and Raj come back from wherever they went to find Penny curled up on the non-Sheldon side of the couch with her feet less than four inches away from his leg, they both get all science facey at her and start talking really, really loud. Well, Leonard does. Raj looks like he's going to pass out.

They're talking really, really loud _right over_ the scene where the skinny Doctor and the other skinny Doctor and Donna are saving the whole freaking everything ever. She looks over at Sheldon, he looks back at her, and right then and there she realizes that they are probably both thinking the exact same thing. Which is weird, but not that weird. She's starting to feel like she's tuned into whatever crazy frequency he broadcasts on.

If Mary Cooper ever comes to visit again, Penny's totally going to ask her if there's any pieces of that Sonic Death Ray still lying around her house.

If Sheldon doesn't beat her to it.

When the guys _finally_ shut up and go away, Sheldon calmly hits a few buttons on the remote and they start over again where the naked other skinny Doctor sits up. When the episode ends and Penny's stopped sniffling, he says, "You know, given adequate access to the nanotech labs on campus, I could probably devise some sort of subcutaneous remote-controlled muting device."

As the Doctor would say, that's _brilliant_.

\---

It's been a year since the end of their blood feud - she knows this because Creepy Vartebedian Junior gave her a freaking anniversary card and a picture of his ten-speed - and she feels like she should celebrate it in some way. She still wants to get Sheldon back, just one time, but she's also noticed that since she started the hardcore planning, she's been spending less money, hardly drinking to fall-down-drunk at all, and the ratio of genuinely nice guys who take her out to good restaurants versus jerks who try to feel her up at McDonald's is way, way better.

She also knows way more about the "lamentable, nay, _deplorable_ state of American-Canadian science fiction television since they took _Stargate: Atlantis_ and _Battlestar Galactica_ off the air" than any pretty girl should know.

And she feels bad about thinking that because _Stargate: Atlantis_ was kind of a fun, goofy show sometimes, and because Ella and Angie and Jen are awesome and sweet and totally pretty even if they don't look like Penny's friends usually do.

So, one night she pulls the board and the markers out of her closet, finds a dusty bottle of tequila and some not-too-shriveled lemons, and calls the girls over for a strategy session.

Angie takes over the pile of markers immediately. She says that having to put up with Howard Freakin' Wolowitz one evening when Penny was at a call-back and Sheldon had to get the new reissue of Superman or whatever or he would just melt into a big crazy puddle means that she totally has the right to boss them all around.

No one disputes it. In fact, Jen even springs for a gigantic triple order of Angie's favorite cheesesticks just to take a little more of the edge off.

The night turns into a weird half-career counseling session, half-How Penny Can Get One Over on the Superbrain Revenge Plan slumber party.

Hours later, Penny can't feel her feet and the board is just a huge mess of colored squiggles. Sheldon knocks on the door, all belted into his pajama suit and visibly twitching with the effort to not freak out at them for singing so loud he can hear them through three doors, two pillows, and the hiss of his least favorite humidifier. "You're making more noise than an herd of gundarks," he grumbles.

They promise to keep it down and immediately dissolve into loud peals of laughter when the door closes behind him.

He knocks again, the frantic rat-tat-tat- _Penny_ s making her emerge from the alcoholic haze long enough to feel bad and hope he doesn't think they're really laughing at _him_ so much as getting yelled at like they're at a junior high sleepover and just got busted by somebody's uptight dad. When she opens the door, she cuts him off before he can say anything.

"Sorry, Sheldon, really. We should probably pass out soon anyway."

He ignores her and squints over her shoulder to where Angie is drawing stick figures with really big balloon-boobs on the board under where they'd written something about Penny's acting ability and Batman.

To Angie, he says, "If you are evaluating Penny's likelihood of being cast in the fourth Dark Knight adaptation, I would ask you to consider that although Penny resembles Vicki Vale, she would be better suited to a superheroine role. Not to mention that she is far more talented than Katie Holmes and Maggie Gyllenhaal combined."

To Penny, he says, "Never mind the noise; I will turn on an additional humidifier. Good luck with your pow-wow." His smile looks nothing like the Joker this time.

She smacks a kiss on his cheek, going up on tiptoe with one hand pressed against his shoulder so she doesn't topple over. He turns bright red, spins around, and marches back across the hallway. She props herself against the doorway and watches him go.

To Penny, Jen says, "Um."

Angie just kind of looks at her.

Ella says, "Okay, a) he's totally right; you're awesome. B) I have an idea. And, c) I really think we all need another drink."

\---

Ella doesn't just have an idea; Ella has a _brilliant_ idea.

She also has really great taste in actresses and friends, obviously.

The next morning after everyone has stumbled home and she's found someone to cover her shift, Penny erases everything on the board except for Angie's big-boobed stick people and one word, underlined seven times:

_Bazinga._

She goes to Ikea and gets one of those picture rail things and installs it in her bedroom so she can hang up the whiteboard like a painting. She finds a can of lacquer at the bottom of her crafts bucket and paints over the surface so she doesn't accidentally wipe the thing clean.

She has to force herself to go slow so she doesn't tip her hand. She starts by showing up on Wednesdays almost half an hour early. Sheldon takes it in stride, as much as he ever can, and after a few weeks she finds herself parking the car and walking up to his office. Sometimes the traffic is light and she gets there early enough to stop by and say hi to Leonard on his way into class and to see how long it takes for Raj to notice her standing outside his door and start squeaking.

Sometimes the traffic is really light and she curls up in the extra chair in Sheldon's office and tries to distract him by asking random questions.

"Why do you only use the black and red markers?"

"What's that a diagram of?"

"Did you watch _Dancing with the Stars_ last night?"

"Does Raj have a middle name?"

"I saw Missy's Twitter updates yesterday. Floor manager is a really big step up! Have you talked to her yet?"

"Where's the restroom?"

Okay, so they aren't all random. They're pretty good for prying him away from his board, though.

They start getting to the comic book store a little earlier every week. As soon as Sheldon peels off and heads for the new releases, she goes straight to the office in back. Stuart's got, like, every issue of everything ever and he sets up a table and chair for her. He also makes her wear these dopey gloves and swear on a stack of _Ultimate X-Men_ never to eat or drink anything while she's there.

He doesn't ask what she's doing and she figures Ella's told him everything.

She makes it through all of his _Deadpool_ and _Avengers_ trades in a month, and winds up with a bigger crush on Tony Stark than she had on Robert-Downey-Junior-as-Tony-Stark. She also asks Jen to show her where to find Pepper fanfic online and is ridiculously disappointed to find that it's all Pepper/Tony-from-the-movies.

 _inorite? happy ttlly got teh shaft_ , Jen commiserates over IM. _lol the shaft!_

She's driving Sheldon back to the apartment one night when he asks what she does during New Comic Book Day. She's surprised that he's finally noticed she isn't following him around the store and whining until he says, by way of explanation, "Your angry outbursts about how long it takes to evaluate the quality of Stuart's vintage acquisitions have decreased by 87%."

Penny tells him that she uses the office to run lines for the play she's got coming up and he takes her at her word.

\---

The trimester ends and Leonard's back on driving duties. Which works out great for her because in addition to the play Penny's in ( _Cat on a Hot Tin Roof_ , like, _oh my God_. It may only be Canoga (Theater-in-the-)Park but it's _Cat on a Hot Tin Roof_ and she totally rocks Mae's bitchiest lines), she's also figured out how to use torrents. Angie takes over her laptop during a DVD marathon of _Clueless_ and _Freaks and Geeks_ and cracks a copy of some software that lets her read the issues right on the computer without having to print stuff out.

She doesn't quite sink to Queen Penelope depths, but she does notice that her tan is starting to fade and can't remember the last time she did anything outside but rush from car to building and back again.

So she takes the laptop with her to the roof and lazes around in the sun while getting totally wrapped up in the Scarlet Witch. It seems appropriate, especially after the day she accidentally smeared on lotion instead of her sunscreen.

By the time fall rolls around, she's made it through the entire Marvel wiki and all of Stuart's meticulously labeled DC flashcards. She thinks she's finally ready. Jen makes her take a final exam to be sure, but it's 90% questions about Luke Cage because Jen is totally, completely obsessed with him. She's even making plans to dress up and camp out for the movie already, and it hasn't even started shooting yet.

Penny reads in _Variety_ one morning that Tyrese Gibson is finally confirmed as the lead for _Luke Cage_ , and she calls the girls before she's even done with the announcement.

Her second call is to her new agent, Rhonda, who came to see her at Canoga Park and left a card backstage. Penny knows it's a long-shot but tells her she'd like to try for anything at all in the new movie. Rhonda doesn't laugh but she does warn her that she'd probably be looking at background work and nothing more.

As she's driving to work that day, she wonders if she Renee will loan her a pair of red leather boots for the midnight release. She also wonders how many margaritas it will take to talk Jen into going as Polaris instead of Jessica Jones. Green and purple are totally her colors.


	2. Chapter 2

The first step in any successful campaign, she knows from watching _Troy_ a billion times, is to lull the enemy into complacency.

When Leonard tells them he's going out of town to visit his parents at Thanksgiving, she offers to drive Sheldon to the comic book store before Howard even has a chance to start bitching about his scooter not being big enough for the both of them.

Sheldon gives her the Spock face, Original Series edition. Which could be even more unnerving than the science face but if she's anybody in that reboot movie, she's Gaila - and so _not_ Uhura, no matter what Jen might say over and over and over again - so it has, like, zero effect on her.

"Ella said she was going to be there this week to help out and I haven't seen her in a while." She gives him a big, sunny Gaila smile back and his eyebrow drops.

Howard opens his mouth, and Raj elbows him in the shin. He gives them all a sheepish look and Penny answers it with another big grin, certain that she doesn't want to know.

They go back to watching the new episode of _America's Next Top Model_ and when the guys start arguing about whether Moniqa would make a better Storm or Liberty Belle, Penny gives them her best blank look.

As they loudly debate the merits of both and Sheldon throws his hands in the air, she slurps up her noodles and thinks, _Oh yeah. Vengeance is_ mine.

Besides, Moniqa is so totally Rogue material. Anybody with eyes can see that.

\---

Ella is a junior auditor in an accounting firm downtown and hates every minute of it. So when Penny calls and begs her to skip work the afternoon before Thanksgiving to hang around the comic book store and help put the bazinga plan into action, she agrees before Penny's even done talking.

"Hell, I'll take off the morning too. This'll give me an excuse to get Stuart to rearrange the manga section." She pauses. "Are you sure you don't need me to call in sick for the whole week?"

Penny rushes to assure her that won't be necessary. She's seen what happens when her friend takes too much time off - there are only so many times a person can watch a Nicholas Sparks movie before going insane and Ella is about one more viewing of _Message in a Bottle_ away.

"Fine," Ella sighs before audibly brightening. "Can I wear my _Alias_ wig? I haven't done that in years."

It has to be said. There's just no getting around it.

"Sweetie, you really need to throw that thing away."

\---

Step two - she's totally going with the whole _Troy_ thing because any time hot men in skirts equals research is a-okay in her book - is to move the innocuous object deep into enemy territory.

The day before Thanksgiving, she follows Sheldon into the store, still babbling about her nephew and how he's discovered _Watchdogs_ or something like that. "You know, the one they made into the movie with the dad from _Supernatural_ ," she says, like she has no idea what she's talking about. Like Jen hadn't held her laptop hostage until Penny agreed to read the graphic novel and watch the DVD with her.

Sheldon gives one of his sniffs of disapproval and lets her mangling of the title slide. He starts a one-sided conversation about how the art in the novel was impressive but the characters were too jaded for his taste and blah blah blah. Penny's read it three times in the last couple of months and it's never going to be her favorite, but she appreciates its cynicism all the same. Plus, anything that pokes holes into the pat little endings superheroes always seem to pull out of their asses has her vote.

Once he's collected his new releases, he steers her toward the DC section and starts riffling through the issues. "No, no, no, no, maybe when he's older, no, no, here." He pulls out one of the plastic sleeves, holding it gingerly between thumb and forefinger. " _The New Teen Titans Archives, Volume One_."

She pulls out her best blank look again when what she really wants to do is ask, "Really? You want him to follow up Rorschach the Sociopath with the Boy Wonder?"

Instead, she flips through the row closest to her and pulls out the book Ella had stashed there for her when she called to say they were on their way. "Ooh, how about this?" she asks, holding up a copy of _All Star Batman_. "It's got Robin too!"

"'The Goddamn Batman'? Penny, really," Sheldon scoffs. "If you want the boy to hate the entire industry, by all means, give him that." He looks down at the book in his fingers. "These, on the other hand, are entirely suitable for someone your nephew's age and will likely foster a fondness for the character-building of DC's back catalog. You know, the Teen Titans were some of my very first comic books. My cousin Billy Joe gave me his collection when he went away to boot camp."

He has a goofy smile that makes him look a lot like the kid he must have been, before he started damming everything up and pretending to be a robot. She decides that the bazinga can wait, and takes _The New Teen Titans_ up to the counter for Stuart to ring up.

On the way out, Sheldon stops dead in the middle of the aisle and says, "Oh! You didn't say hello to Ella like you wanted."

"Nah, that's okay. She looks pretty busy," she says. "I'll call her later."

She grabs him by the shirtsleeve and starts hauling him toward the door. In its reflection, she sees him cast a confused look at Ella, who is lounging against the back door and twirling a lock of bright pink hair around her finger in the worst imitation of casual Penny's ever seen.

On the other hand, what little she saw of the manga shelves do look a whole lot better.

\---

At this point, step three is a complete bust. The old Greek guy would be so disappointed in her.

On the way home from the store, Sheldon starts giving her the backstory on the New Teen Titans - it takes him the entire drive just to explain how Aqualad was replaced - and she can't help it: she's totally interested.

His accent gets thicker as he gets more excited about the characters, until he's practically drawling like a cowboy. Penny pretends to get a call on her cell and leaves him at his door. Once hers is closed behind her, she tears into the bag and flops down on the couch to read.

Then she really does get a call on her cell.

"I just couldn't do it, Ella," she admits. "He started acting all normal and, like, human. He even smiled, a real smile! It was so weird but kind of adorable."

"So you bought Teen Titans? Oh honey, surely we've taught you better than that." Ella's words spell out disappointment but her voice sounds irritatingly happy. Penny might even go out on a limb and say she sounds smug. "I told you Sheldon's evil powers might be too much for you without backup."

"Oh my god, no you didn't! And shut up, this looks like fun," she says, aware of just how defensive she sounds. _Wow_ , she thinks, _what is happening to me?_

Ella teases her a little bit more and then segues into telling her how much Stuart likes the _Alias_ wig. Penny can't hang up fast enough, which was probably Ella's plan in the first place.

She settles back down on the couch with a bag of chips and the Teen Titans. When someone knocks an hour or so later, she stuffs the book under a hoodie and stomps over to fling the door open.

It's Raj, holding a small whiteboard in his hands. _Dinner getting cold - still up for Halo?_

"Oh sweetie, I'm sorry. I'll be over in a sec," she says, already spinning around the room looking for something to change into. She's still wearing her uniform - when was the last time she did that sober?

Raj knocks on the doorjamb and she looks over to see that he's wiped the board clean and scribbled something else.

_Hurry!!! Howard making me edit new JDate ad_

She shudders, full-body, and scoops up a pair of track pants and a tank top out of the laundry basket by the kitchen. Raj squeaks and all but runs back across the hall.

Once she's changed, she lets herself in to the guys' apartment. Her food is just barely on the wrong side of lukewarm so she sticks it in the microwave for a minute. Howard's pecking away at his laptop, occasionally leering at the screen and muttering things like "would you look at the tchotchkes on that one"; Raj keeps scooting farther away from him on the floor.

"Guys, where's Sheldon?"

Raj shrugs and points back toward the bedrooms. Howard doesn't look up from the keyboard but says, "He's been in his room since you got back."

She hits the button to add another thirty seconds to her dinner and walks down the hallway. "Sheldon? Everything okay back here?"

His door is open just a crack and she can see him moving around inside. She pushes it all the way open, careful to keep her feet firmly planted in the hallway.

"What the hell?"

It looks like a tornado swept through. A really anal-retentive tornado, but still. His closet door is wide open and there are boxes stacked precariously all over the bed. He looks up at the interruption and she sees that his eyes are overly bright and wide-open, like someone's slipped him a cappuccino again.

"Penny, these are for you," he says, then reconsiders. "I mean, these are for your nephew. I don't expect that you have any interest in furthering, or perhaps I should say _commencing_ , your education in the DC universe." In two giant strides, he crosses the empty floor between them and dumps a huge stack of plastic-wrapped comics in her arms.

She's totally gaping at him like she's Johnny Depp II. There must be something blocking the connection between her brain and her body because she can't make herself stop. He goes back to the bed where he removes the lid of yet another box and starts rooting through it.

"I know I have a mint-condition copy of _Batman #357_ in here somewhere but my index appears to be in need of a serious overhaul. It hasn't been the same since I tried to cross-reference by villain."

He looks back at her, the same goofy little grin from earlier tugging at the corners of his mouth again. " _#357_ is a must-read for anyone delving into the mythology of Robin. When Dick Grayson leaves to join the Teen Titans as Nightwing, the mantle is passed to-"

"Jason Todd, yeah, I know," Penny finishes for him. She's barely aware of the words coming out of her mouth, too busy staring down at the comics in her hands and trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

Sheldon gasps and whirls to face her again. "You know Jason Todd?" he says in that wispy, scandalized tone he sometimes gets when she's shocked him right down to his nerdy foundation.

Penny looks up. She's too busy trying to process that _Sheldon_ just handed her a good portion of his _comic book collection_ and can't come up with a reasonable explanation why she would know that; it's been months since he had a near-heart attack at learning she's never seen any of the Batman movies, never mind knowing any of the characters' names aside from the obvious.

"Um," she says.

His voice rises to a shriek, like she's just told him that she rearranged his cereal boxes to go in alphabetical order. " _You know Jason Todd?_ "

She hears footsteps behind her. Howard shushes Raj, who is furiously whispering something she can't make out. She shifts her arms to hold the comics protectively against her chest.

Penny wrinkles her nose and offers a weak, "Um, bazinga?"

\---

"So let me get this straight," Howard says, hands steepled in front of him like he's trying out his fake psychiatrist routine again. "Sheldon, of his own free will, handed over several rare issues of Batman along with a number of other comics from his collection."

Next to him, Raj looks up from his careful perusal of the pile of _Teen Titans_ and _Batman_ s and what Penny thinks might be a copy of something with Captain America - like she'd actually let her nephew read _that_ \- and nods.

"And he was still searching for more." Howard glances at Sheldon, who's still breathing into a paper bag. He nods as well.

"Okay, _wow_ ," Howard says, sitting back heavily and shaking his head. "This is huge. This is 'but Tin Man you already have a heart' huge."

Penny matches Sheldon's death glare but sadly Howard's head remains intact. Raj gets up on his knees and whispers something in Howard's ear.

"Ah, an excellent point, my good man." He turns to face Penny and rubs his hands together. "Raj has reminded me that you have yet to answer the question. You know Jason Todd?"

She rolls her eyes. "Not personally."

All three guys are staring at her with varying looks of suspicion and disbelief and it is pissing her off. It gets right in her craw, whatever that is, and it sticks there. Like she's going to make this up? Six months ago she barely knew what the Batmobile looked like, but now... Not to mention the fact that they could wipe the floor with her if she tried to fake it so what would even be the point? She sits up straight and starts listing the things she does know about the second Robin.

"He's from a circus family and after his parents died he moved in with Bruce Wayne," she begins.

Sheldon pulls the bag away from his mouth, a distinctly relieved look on his face. "TNT has been re-running the Schumacher movies this month. She must be confusing-"

Oh _hell_ no, he's not going to take this away from her.

"Yeah, just like Dick Grayson, Dr. Smartypants. They basically gave him the exact same backstory up until after _Crisis on Infinite Earths_ when they rebooted him like Captain Kirk's birthday. Then he was a little hoodlum-in-training who tried to jack the Batmobile's tires, like he was going to get away with that!" She has to bite down on her lip to keep from word-vomiting the rest of what she knows. She used flashcards for this, for crying out loud. Color-coded flashcards!

"Which is part of the reason why DC sucks, to be honest. They reboot so often you can't even keep track of who's who." Okay, so maybe the lip-biting has lost its power because she totally didn't mean to let that slip out. Jen's shrieking reaction to a similar sentiment was bad enough; she does not want to know what Sheldon's about to do.

The paper bag sounds like a gunshot when it pops in his grip. "Why DC _sucks_?" he says, his voice all low and aggressive and slightly dangerous. Almost like Clint Eastwood or something.

She's feeling pretty brave so she matches his tone. "That's what I said."

"Oh God," Howard whimpers. Raj clutches his hand.

Sheldon rises to his feet and looms over her.

"Guys? What's going on? It sounds like you've all fallen down a well." Leonard's voice drifts up from the cell on the coffee table. "Your phone totally blows, Raj."

"We're going to have to call you back, Leonard," Sheldon says, very calmly, still in that Clint Eastwood-y tone. "I'm temporarily suspending the tribunal. Give my regards to your mother." He leans down to press the end call button, cutting Leonard off in mid-splutter.

He tries to loom over her again, one eyebrow raised, but Penny's already on her feet and getting in his face.

"We're just... gonnagosomewhereelsebye," Howard says, and Raj nods frantically in agreement. The door slams behind them and she can hear Howard squawking out in the hallway, "What does John Hughes have to do with anything? This is practically the apocalypse! I need to call my rabbi!"

Penny has no problem with them fleeing. The fewer witnesses to her kicking Sheldon's ass, the better. He's staring down at her with some kind of combination science and death-glare face. It makes her blood boil.

"This has something to do with that whiteboard in your apartment, doesn't it?" he asks, folding his arms against his chest. "I should have known that you were up to no good when I found it. In my experience, attractive females tend to use such a tool for scribbling personal messages and pop lyrics, not complex schematics."

She decides to ignore the attractive part even though it gives her a weird little flutter. "Oh, right, in all your _extensive_ experience, you've discovered the one and only reason girls have whiteboards."

"Actually, I named two reasons."

"Not the point!" she yells. She's almost ready to pull her hair out, a feeling she knows all too well.

"Then what is the point, Penny?" he sneers. "Because you have violated at least five subsections of our friendship agreement."

\---

She wishes she knew what the point is. This stupid plan had seemed like such a good idea. Sure, she was completely tanked the night they came up with it but when Ella laid it all out, it made so much sense. All she had to do was to bone up on some comic book trivia, follow a few simple rules, and whammo! Reality would shift like a bad episode of _Sliders_ and Sheldon would be babbling physics crap while she gloated over beating him at comics trivia.

At first, that had seemed like a fate worse than death.

"But comics are so _boring_ ," she whined.

For some reason, Angie found that completely hysterical. Between giggles, she gasped, "Oh my god, you have _no_ idea."

Jen smacked her and leaned forward. "Okay, you know how much you ended up liking _Heroes_ after we talked you into watching it? Just imagine that, only it's billowing capes and talk bubbles and there's like eighty years of it instead of one great season and some not so great ones."

"Don't forget the hot guys!" Ella yelled from where she was mixing up another batch of margaritas in the blender on the kitchen counter.

Jen went all dreamy-eyed and sighed, " _Luke Cage_."

"Yeah, but that's TV. I'm good with TV," Penny protested. "It's practically my job, or will be someday. There's no way I'm going to catch up! How am I supposed to one-up Sheldon, High King of Dorkville?"

Angie was still giggling but she managed to stop long enough to give her a dirty look anyway. "Don't even go there. Do not. There is nothing that guy can do that you can't." She paused. "Okay, so maybe proving the Grand Unification Theory is a little bit out of your depth-"

"You think?"

"-but comic books are not rocket science. You just need to figure out how to approach it."

Ella passed around another round of margaritas and Angie continued, "Think of it like a role you're trying out for. You research those, right?"

Penny hesitated. She wouldn't call it _research_ exactly but she did like to try to fit into their skin when she had enough time to prepare. And when she played Mae, she poured a lot of her leftover frustrations with Kurt into rehearsals and let them color her line readings. Which was apparently exactly the right thing to do because she landed an agent because of the role. All of that, though, was way too much thinking for how much she'd had to drink.

"Just point me in the right direction," she sighed. "But you guys are totally going to have to help me with this."

\---

Now, standing toe to toe with Sheldon, she can't remember why she thought the plan was ever going to work. It was supposed to go like this:

  * Penny learns comics  
  

  * Sheldon is rude and condescending about Penny not knowing comics  
  

  * Penny totally pulls the rug out from under him with a well-timed bit of obscure comics trivia thereby rocking his world and making him question everything he thinks he knows.



It's kind of a stupid plan when she thinks about it like that. Plus, she did all the prep work, and managed to fall in love with all things geek along the way to boot, but she's completely lost whatever motivation she once had to use her powers for evil.

God, she's even thinking like him now.

Maybe if she'd started earlier. Maybe it's just been too long since their feud that she's forgotten how badly she wants to win. Or maybe it's still all his fault: for buying her that acting book and being close to human and smiling like a real boy.

She slumps forward and rubs her forehead. She's exhausted and her feet hurt and she still hasn't even gotten her food out of the microwave. And even though she knows it's not going to happen now, she really wants to just grab a couple of issues of _Batman_ and retreat to her apartment. "I don't know what the point is. I don't even think I know what subsections you're talking about."

She really doesn't. Their agreement is at least thirty pages long and she stopped paying attention after the second of the fourteen places he made her initial.

Sheldon laughs like a supervillain. "Oh Penny, don't try to change the subject."

"I'm not! I don't know why you're so angry about this! Yeah, okay, I shouldn't have said anything about DC sucking because I haven't spent as much time with it as I have with Marvel, but-"

"You can't know comics, Penny!" he yells over her babbling explanation, his drawl ridiculously pronounced. From the look on his face, she thinks that if his hair were long enough, he'd totally be pulling it out right now.

"What, I'm too stupid?"

He reaches out and wraps his hands around her upper arms. "You're too everything!" he says, right in her face. His hands are warm and kind of sweaty, and goosebumps spread out from where they cover her skin.

It's the first time since that Christmas gift that he's voluntarily touched her and he sounds like something out of one of the movies she can never talk the guys into watching. She's glad he's holding on to her because her knees are kind of doing this weird turning-to-jelly thing and she's not sure she can stay upright on her own. She opens her mouth and her voice comes out low and a little raspy and she has to lick her lips to make actual words form. "What does that mean?"

His hands tighten on her arms and another wave of goosebumps washes over her, popping up over her neck and chest, with a curl of heat following right behind them. He watches as she licks her lips again. His nostrils flare as he sucks in a deep breath, before blurting, "You're too pretty, and warm, and friendly, and you smell like Meemaw's cookies, and you don't wear enough clothing, and Leonard thinks he's been in love with you all this time, and you make me want to know what feelings are, and _you can't know comics_."

Penny's mind is running in about forty different directions, the first of which is that he is yelling at her in one big run-on sentence. Everybody knows how much he hates that.

She opens her mouth to try to defuse the weird, tense feeling in the room but what comes out instead is: "Dick Grayson was originally supposed to die in _Infinite Crisis_."

Sheldon makes a strangled noise deep in his throat. His hands curl up over her shoulders, thumbs slipping beneath the thin straps of her tank top. She goes up on tiptoe and crashes her mouth against his.


	3. The Vengeance Paradox

He's surprisingly good at it, this whole kissing thing. She wonders when he's done it before because there's no way he picked _this_ up on the internet.

She's backed up against the table that separates the kitchen from the living room. The edge of it digs into her in a way that should probably feel painful but she can't think beyond Sheldon pressing up against her and his thumbs rubbing the skin just under the upper edge of her tank top.

Her calves start to burn from standing on tiptoe so she tries to hitch herself up on one of the stools to even the difference in their heights. When she does, he pulls away, lips and hands. She overbalances and catches herself on the other stool while trying to follow, completely lost in the feel of him and not wanting to break contact.

He backs away, well beyond his normal bubble of personal space. They're both breathing hard and he's looking everywhere but at her.

"Sheldon, honey, what's-"

He cuts her off with a sharp jerky movement of his arms. "This is not- We shouldn't-," he stutters before squaring his shoulders. "I have to go."

Before she can do anything but gape at him, something she's really getting tired of doing tonight, he crosses the living room and fishes his keys out of the bowl.

"Please don't be here when I get back," he says, finally looking at her for a long moment before turning and leaving.

\---

Penny waits in the apartment for almost an hour before giving up and going back to her own. Her first instinct was to go running after him but she knows he's probably having a complete meltdown. He was already heading down that road _before_ they started making out so she can only imagine what he'll do now.

She sits on her bed in the dark, staring at the dull glow of reflected light on her whiteboard. Her lips feel swollen and kind of tingly and she swears she can still feel Sheldon's thumbs brushing against her skin. When that starts to drive her crazy, she moves out into the living room and sits on the couch so she can hear him when he comes home. The lights are still off, so he won't see any spilling under her door and get spooked, and she falls asleep without hearing his door open once.

When she wakes up on Thanksgiving morning with a stiff neck and her hair stuck in the corners of her mouth, she jumps off the couch and goes tearing across the hallway. She pounds on the door and calls Sheldon's name, and when he doesn't answer, she lets herself in with the spare key.

All of the dinner stuff they'd left out is gone and there's a new trash bag in the can. She checks the sink - there's a clean bowl and spoon drying on the rack - then the fridge. The milk has a new hashmark even with the level of the liquid with today's date, something he'd started doing after she "borrowed" it one too many times, and there's a covered container of _pad thai_ on the top shelf. Her name is written on the Post-it stuck to the lid - no-nonsense block letters in Sheldon's handwriting. He's even added a line under it and she stares at it for a while trying to figure out what _that_ means.

Eventually she takes the food back to her apartment and warms it in the microwave while she tries to find her cell phone. The last time she remembers having it was when she hung up on Ella and tossed it away.

The timer dings and she plops down on her couch to eat. When she curls her legs up on the seat, she kicks the copy of _New Teen Titans_ under the hoodie and her phone drops to the floor.

There are no missed messages or calls, hardly surprising since she couldn't have slept through the incredibly loud ringtone she can't remember how to change. Penny scrolls through her call log and hits send.

"Why _hello_ there," Howard smarms after the first ring. "To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?"

"I'm not in the mood, Howard," she says flatly. "Have you seen Sheldon?"

He hasn't and he seems more interested in finding out what happened after he and Raj ran away than in whatever's happened to Sheldon. And inviting her over for a Thanksgiving brisket. She hangs up on him and texts Raj, who doesn't respond. She's on the verge of calling just to yell at him when she remembers that he left his phone on the coffee table the night before.

Then, she tries both Leonard and Sheldon's offices on campus, Sheldon's cell, the comic book store, Stuart's cell, the lab Sheldon sometimes hides in when a new grad student gets her hooks into him. She even logs on her laptop and private messages him in _Age of Conan_ , just in case he's gotten over his aversion to internet café etiquette.

In between calls, she throws out the rest of her noodles and takes a shower. She feels like she's going to go crazy if she sits inside for one more minute but she doesn't want to leave in case he comes home. Sheldon's a total weirdo, sure, and he was really freaked out the night before, but disappearing like this is so not like him. He likes backup plans and emergency contacts and itemized itineraries. And with Leonard still in Jersey, it's not like he could have just hopped in someone's car and been driven away. He can't do buses, especially after the last time he got caught, and after the nightmarish ride from the airport when they came back from the Arctic he had declared that he would never ride in a cab again unless properly outfitted in a hazmat suit.

She's sitting in a chair by the window, sort of staring off into space and trying to watch the street below when her phone lights up. She hits the talk button before the ringing starts.

"Angie, I know I said I'd bring the green bean casserole but I don't think I'm going to make it over for dinner today. Something happened last night and Sheldon disappeared and I can't find him and it's kind of my fault he ran away and I am freaking out," she says all in a rush.

"Sweetie, breathe," Angie says when she can get a word in edgewise, "Sheldon's here. And _you_ need to get your butt over here pronto. He just tried to tell Jen that her mashed potatoes are going to have the consistency of glue if she doesn't lay off the ricer."

\---

Penny is totally confused the whole way over to the cute bungalow that Angie and Jen share in Garfield Heights. When she told them that Leonard was going out of town for Thanksgiving, Angie had marched across the hall and invited Sheldon over for the dinner she was planning. Sheldon, in typical fashion, had declined the invitation. He was marginally more polite than she would have expected but Penny had long been convinced that he was afraid of Angie in the same way he feared his sister.

So what is he doing there? She can't even begin to think of a reason why he would choose now to socialize with her friends, especially after the way he ran away from her the night before and went AWOL today,

She finds a parking spot on the street several houses away and runs. She rings the doorbell - even in her mild state of panic she can't bring herself to just go barging in. It's different when you live across the hall from somebody. And when you've used their shower.

The house looks even cleaner than Penny's ever seen it, based on what little she can see before Angie pushes her back onto the porch and closes the door behind them. Even from out here she can hear Jen shrieking at Sheldon to get out of the kitchen if he wants to keep all his fingers.

Hands on hips and scowl in place, Angie does her best teacher stance, the one she often says gets even the rowdiest of fifth-graders to apologize. Penny's never had it directed at her before and now she appreciates just how those kids must feel when faced with a disapproving, and frankly terrifying, Angie.

"Now, I don't know what the hell happened last night that would bring Sheldon Cooper over to my house with no notice," Angie says, "but you better fix this and fast. That man came in here and _vacuumed_."

Penny winces: Angie's already a neat freak. "Yeah, um, that's kind of his thing. Did he say anything? Why he's here?"

"Just that he's decided to 're-assess his social paradigms'."

Penny does her best to ignore the giant boulder that's suddenly taken up residence in her stomach. She has visions of Sheldon ripping up their friendship agreement and replacing her in his inner circle while explaining that his relationship algorithm or flowchart or whatever must have had a flaw. She feels her face fall and tries to hide it by looking down at her feet.

Angie makes a little clucking noise and pulls her into a hug. "Come on, girl, it can't be that bad! I take it you finally pulled the bazinga last night?"

"Kinda," Penny mumbles into her hair. "I messed it up though. Andthenwesortofmadeout," she says all in a rush. "A lot."

Angie doesn't say anything but Penny can feel her start to shake. She breaks the hug and steps back.

"Oh my god, are you _laughing_ at me?"

"I'm sorry!" Angie gasps between giggles. "It's just- You and..." she trails off as she bends over double, hands over her mouth like that will help hold back the laughter.

Penny crosses her arms and glares. When Angie gets herself under control and sags back against the door, wheezing slightly, Penny snaps, "You done?"

The other girl doesn't look the least bit sorry as she wipes her eyes. "I think so. Have you told Ella yet? Because, holy _crap_. If you haven't I want to see the look on her face!"

Penny narrows her eyes.

"Hey, truce! Don't turn that death ray on just yet. Let's go in there and get the Iron Chef and the Tin Man separated and we'll go from there, okay?"

When Penny nods, Angie reaches back and opens the door. As they cross over the threshold into the living room, which very definitely shows all the hallmarks of a Sheldon Cooper Housecleaning Special, she says, "Wait. What do you mean you want to see the look on Ella's face?"

\---

They find Sheldon and Jen in the kitchen. Jen's brandishing a flat bamboo spoon, her normally neat hair plastered to her cheeks with sweat and globs of potato flying through the air as she makes a rude gesture. Sheldon, on the other hand, is as blissfully oblivious as always, standing at attention with his hands hanging loosely at his sides while he lectures her on the proper way to keep side dishes warm until the turkey is done.

"Of course, once the turkey has reached an internal temperature of 160° Fahrenheit, you can start the biscuits in the same oven so that they're ready by the time the meat is sufficiently cooked and cooled. Are you sure you haven't inserted the thermometer near bone? Because that will skew the results significantly. My mother frequently has that problem."

When she sees Penny and Angie step into the kitchen, Jen throws her hands in the air. "Get him out of here before I bake him into a pie!"

Sheldon does a precise turn on one foot. "Oh, Penny, there you are. I was just counseling Jen on-"

"Yeah, I heard," Penny interrupts. "Living room. Now."

She stomps back out without checking to see if he's following. Angie gives her two raised eyebrows and scoots out of her way, fast, before going to talk Jen down.

Penny swings around when she gets to the couch, startling Sheldon who's only a few steps behind her. He jumps back and drops his eyes to the floor like he's waiting for her to start yelling. Normally that would make her anger deflate like a balloon but this time it only makes her more furious. She's been worrying her ass off about him all day, and he was too busy annoying her friends to even answer his phone!

"What are you doing here, Sheldon?" she grits out.

He looks surprised. "Angie invited me over for her holiday party. You were standing right behind her when she did."

"And you turned her down!"

"A decision I've obviously decided to reverse, although I may come to regret it based on the level of culinary skill Jen is displaying. Or _not_ displaying, I should say."

Since Jen's apprenticing to a chef at a local restaurant with a freaking Michelin star rating, Penny ignores him. "You can't just run out on me and then disappear for a whole day. I've been worried sick. You didn't even answer your phone!"

He pulls it out of his pants pocket and looks at the display. "That's odd. I certainly don't remember setting it to silent. Didn't you get my note?"

"There was no note!" she yells. "Believe me, I would have seen a note!"

"I left it on your _pad thai_ in the fridge. I assumed, erroneously as it turns out, that you would have it for breakfast since it had already been paid for. You haven't been to the grocery store in at least a week."

Okay, so maybe she wouldn't have seen a note. Either it fell off in the fridge, which she doubts considering that he's told her more than once that he's improved the Post-it sticking factor by at least 50%, or she should have flipped the paper over instead of balling it up and throwing it on his kitchen floor to drive him crazy later.

"Whatever," she huffs, feeling a little awkward now. That he'd done something that was actually considerate for a change kind of throws her for a loop. The boulder's still sitting in her stomach, though, and she thinks it might be getting even bigger. "How'd you get here?"

"I took the bus."

While she's still trying to process his words, because according to the City of Pasadena Sheldon Cooper isn't technically allowed within fifty feet of an ARTS bus, his expressions softens and he takes a few steps toward her. She leans in to him without meaning to and can't make herself back away.

"I've been wanting to test a personal hypothesis, that given sufficient distraction I can withstand even the most challenging of circumstances," he says, leaning even closer. His eyes are wide and animated; a faint rise of color is starting to creep over his cheeks and she thinks maybe he's talking about more than just riding a bus with no bungee cords. "I had a very intriguing conversation with a man wearing a pink straw bonnet that kept me quite diverted for the length of the ride. It was about the nature of the universe; his theories were sound but his hygiene left something to be desired."

She can't even begin to respond to that so she opts for asking again, in a much softer tone, "What are you _doing_ here?"

"Based on recent events," and here he gives her a look from under hooded eyelids that makes her knees start to wobble again and her hand to reach out to clasp his elbow to steady herself, "and after consulting my social interactions log, I've decided that it was past time I revised my previous conclusions regarding personal relationships and my ability to maintain focus on more than just my quest for a Nobel prize. Observing you among your other friends seemed as good a place as any to start."

\---

Before she can make him explain why, or come up with a way to say anything at all that doesn't make her sound like an idiot, or just throw herself at him, the doorbell rings. Stuart, Ella, and some guy she doesn't know walk in bearing covered dishes and a stack of DVDs. Ella does an exaggerated double-take at seeing them standing practically on top of each other in the middle of the living room and stutters out a weak greeting, pointedly staring at Penny the whole time. The guy with them waves vaguely and mumbles a hello, then heads for the kitchen with his covered dish.

Stuart - wonderful, blissfully oblivious Stuart - grins and says, "Sheldon! Ella said you weren't coming today."

"Understandably," Sheldon says. "I only decided this morning to join the festivities."

"Well, great! The more, the merrier. I can say that since it isn't my house, you know. Or my beer."

Sheldon gives him a faint smile. After a few seconds, Penny realizes that he isn't quite up to keeping up his side of the conversation with Stuart when comics aren't involved. She pulls her hand away from his arm, painfully aware of Ella's gaze following her every move.

"What's with the DVDs? Aren't we going to watch the game?" she asks.

If she thought it was uncomfortable before with just Ella staring at her, that was nothing to how it feels when everyone else turns to look - even Jen, who sticks her head around the kitchen door. If they were in a movie trailer, she thinks, this would totally be the moment after the record scratches to a halt.

The guy she doesn't know, who she notices looks an awful lot like Stuart now that they're both looking at her like she's sprouting wings, finally laughs and says, "Man, I haven't watched football since I quit the high school marching band. Maybe we should turn one on for a while. I think I read somewhere that Detroit's playing today."

Stuart frowns. "Detroit has a football team?"

"Not one worth counting until this year," Sheldon says, then looks startled to see that everyone has finally stopped staring at Penny and turned to gape at him. Including Penny. He bristles and sounds defensive when he continues, "I'm from _Texas_. Avoiding conversation about and knowledge of the sport is simply not possible, no matter how much one might protest. Eventually, one develops an appreciation for the game, if not a fondness."

It's almost like he's doing this on purpose now, throwing her completely off balance. Like somehow he's known all along about the bazinga and learned how to keep secrets, and is now pulling her down into his web of deceit and pranks to pull one on her instead. Because she may have learned comics, and that display of her newfound prowess may have caused him to hyperventilate and nearly shut down, but she's the one spinning off her axis and wondering when up became down.

Penny does know one thing for sure.

"I need a drink."

\---

Angie and Ella follow her into the kitchen, leaving the guys to make conversation or build a robot or whatever. Back at home they'd all have been glued to the football on TV as soon as they walked through the door.

Penny opens a beer and chugs. She braces herself for the inevitable interrogation from Ella, but she and Angie just start popping off Tupperware lids and sticking serving spoons in the dishes until Jen shoos them out. Penny watches her check the temperature on the turkey and throw a tray of biscuits in the oven.

Feeling disappointed that Ella _isn't_ giving her the third degree makes her feel like an idiot, and Jen smacks her hand with a roll of paper towels when she tries to help, so Penny eventually wanders out of the kitchen and through the house. The doorbell rings a few more times and by the time she gets back to the living room, there are half a dozen more people she doesn't know, including two incredibly adorable twin girls wearing matching dinosaur t-shirts. She introduces herself to everybody and lets Doug, the former band geek and Stuart's brother, suck her into a conversation about the new Spiderman/Disney Princesses crossover.

He's not nearly the comics expert that the rest of the guys are and she has to hold back a big goofy smile of triumph every time she stumps him. The whole time, though, she's got one eye on Sheldon as he sits quietly in each and every chair and couch in the living room before moving on to the next. Somehow he manages to keep up his side of a conversation with the twins at the same time without losing track of where he's already tested. When he goes back to the beginning with the girls trailing along behind him and starts again, this time with a more obvious butt-wiggle, she tells Doug she needs another drink and ducks into the kitchen.

Which may be a huge mistake. Ella's in there by herself, poking a finger into a Jello mold and giving it a disgusted look. She holds it up when Penny comes in. "Can you believe people still make these monstrosities? I hoped my grandma was the last of a dying breed. Here, poke it. I think there's mayonnaise in there."

Penny declines and the platter makes a hollow thunk when Ella sets it down and crosses her arms. "So what's going on with you?"

"Oh, you know," Penny stalls. "Thanksgiving!"

Ella gives her the stinkeye.

"...so Stuart's brother is really nice! How long is he in town?"

"Sunday, I think. Maybe a week from Sunday, I don't know. Don't change the subject. What was with all the close-talking earlier?"

She takes more than a full minute to answer. Ella waits patiently through all the false starts as Penny's mouth opens, then closes, then opens and closes again.

"Why don't we go outside?" Ella says, and starts to grab a beer for both of them. She shakes her head and closes the refrigerator door, detouring to the cabinet over the microwave to pull out a bottle of something amber-colored instead. They walk out onto the deck in back, just a pair of lounge chairs and a rusty table.

Penny tries again, to tell Ella about screwing up the bazinga, about Sheldon's hyperventilating and Howard's psychiatrist routine. How Sheldon handed over his comics like it was no big deal, how his mouth felt on hers. How he looked when he pulled away, like someone had broken the wires and circuits inside him that pass for a heart. How worried she's been all day and how he's acting like nothing happened, except for those few minutes in the living room when he acted like something really freaking huge had happened. How she wants to run back inside and drag him out to her car and back to their apartments to spend the next three days memorizing the shape of his hands and the angle of his jaw when he smiles and the feel of his body against hers.

She wants to tell Ella about how she needs to figure out what the hell is going on before Leonard gets home because she knows how much this is going to hurt him. Because she's never been able to feel about him the way she's starting to think she feels about Sheldon.

Instead, she wails, "I don't _knooooow_ ," complete with flapping hands and an embarrassing burst of tears.

\---

They wind up sitting in the grass off the edge of the deck after Ella tries to climb in Penny's lounge chair to give her a hug. The canvas straps buckle beneath them, dumping them on their butts, and they crawl off into the grass so they don't get hurt.

"So I guess I don't really need any pie," Ella slurs after taking another swig from the bottle she'd brought outside, "but I really love pie. I think pie is good for me. Pie's really frustrating sometimes though."

"Oh my god, pie is _so_ frustrating," Penny agrees. She swipes the bottle and takes a long drink herself. She's about 75% sure they're not really talking about pie. "And I used to like all different kinds but now I think I just want the one. Which is _weird_."

"I know!" Ella nods so hard in agreement that she almost falls over. "Your pie is totally weirder than mine!"

Penny's about to argue that that isn't what she meant, and that Stuart is at least as weird as Sheldon, but Jen calls to them from the back door. "Turkey's on the table, girls. Move it or lose it!"

They move it.

\---

Penny has a glass or three of wine with dinner and on top of whatever it was they were drinking outside, it gives her a really nice floaty feeling that lasts all the way through watching Sheldon clean the kitchen and squeezing in next to him on the couch to watch the last few minutes of the Oakland-Denver game.

She drifts off somewhere in the middle of the first disc of the _Dune_ miniseries, feet tucked under her and head resting on Sheldon's bony shoulder.

When she wakes up, there's a pillow under her cheek but she can still feel the hard, pointy jut of his bones through it. She tries to wipe away any drool without being too obvious about it.

"You should speak to your dentist about your excessive saliva production while sleeping. It may indicate an underlying condition," Sheldon says.

"Yeah, whatever," she grunts and looks around the room blearily. "Where'd everybody go?"

Sheldon puts the pillow down at the end of the couch and folds his hands in his lap. "Ella, Stuart, and Doug left for Ella's parents' house. Jen took the twins whose names I don't remember to rent a movie; Angie said she was going to pass out; and everyone else is either out in the backyard or has gone home for the evening."

"Aw, you didn't have to sit here with me all night, sweetie." She reaches out to squeeze his hand. When he smiles back at her, crinkling up the skin around his eyes, she somehow forgets to stop.

"I took the time to amend my MySpace profile to indicate that I will no longer be updating there." With his other hand he picks up his phone and shows her the display. "The number and frequency of my new friend requests has been dropping for some time, which is a clear indication that the site is in decline."

"Oh, _clearly_."

He looks ridiculously pleased by her agreement.

\---

The sun is starting to disappear below the horizon outside. Inside, the lights are low, the TV off, and the smell of turkey and stuffing and toasted marshmallows still drifts through the house. She and Sheldon are still sitting on the couch together, just talking and trading long rambling stories with no real purpose or point, something she's not sure they've ever done. Sure, they've talked a lot over the last few years but always while doing something else, never just for the sake of having a conversation.

Sheldon goes into great detail about some experiment he's running, one that's been cobbled together out of the failed attempt in the Arctic that left him moping for weeks after his premature return. She doesn't follow most of it, the terminology or the concepts, but she understands the quick movements of his hands as he sketches an equation in the air and the excited squeak of his voice when he tries to explain the early results and his accent deepens. It's such a far cry from the way he used to not explain anything at all, so completely sure that she could never begin to understand or be interested.

She studies the way he's sitting next to her on the couch, long legs stretched out so his feet rest under the coffee table, hands folded in his lap. His shoulders and upper body are angled toward her, and every once in a while she catches herself studying the way his hair curls against his neck, longer now than she's ever seen it.

Penny tells him about the callback she's got for the Luke Cage movie, how nervous she is. She sees him swallow hard and look anywhere but at her when she says she really hopes the writers haven't screwed it up too bad. When she says that the movie is flat-out going to suck if they gloss over all the Registration Act stuff, he clears his throat and wipes his palms on his corduroy pants.

So when she leans in to tell him that she thinks her agent might be working every last one of her contacts to get her considered for Jessica Jones and he makes that strangled noise again - the one that is probably going to make her actually seriously spontaneously combust one of these days - she doesn't even bother to pretend to lose her balance or to still be drunk and stupid and reckless or anything else like that.

Instead, she puts one hand in the center of his chest, right over Aquaman's face, and says, "I'm going to kiss you and then you're _not_ going to run away like a little baby."

At least that was what she meant to say. She's not really sure how much of it she actually manages to get out before she throws herself at him. He wraps his long arms around her like they've been doing this for years.

There's no hesitation in him as he kisses her back, but when the back door opens and quiet music and laughter drift into the house and she pulls her head back to see who's come in, he wraps his hands around her hips and lifts her off of where she'd crawled into his lap. "I think maybe we should go," he says.

The palm of his right hand is still resting on her hip, his long fingers tapping out a nervous pattern on the skin exposed where her shirt has pulled away from the waistband of her jeans. She shivers and drops a quick kiss on his lips before getting up. He wipes down the kitchen counters one more time while she scribbles a quick thank-you note to Jen and Angie, then pulls him away before he can check to make sure the leftovers are properly stored in the fridge.

He folds himself into the passenger seat, slumps down with his hands resting on his thighs, and is quiet for a few blocks. Penny hums along with a random bit of song that's stuck in her head and makes sure not to drive over the speed limit.

Finally, Sheldon straightens up and says, "I think we should call Leonard. You know I can't keep secrets from him."

"Do you want to keep this secret?"

" _No_ ," he says, like he can't believe she would ask.

"Why don't we wait until he gets back?" she counters. She looks over in time to catch his nod and smiles. "I think we probably need to figure out a few things first anyway."

He turns to look at her and she has to turn her attention back to the road before his expression makes her drive into a parked car.

"For once," he says and reaches over to take her hand, completely ignoring all his previous demands that she keep both hands on the wheel, "I don't think there's anything about this that requires further study."

\---

He's right, of course. Isn't that the way it usually goes?

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written August/September 2009


End file.
